Case Studies

Chelsea Football Club needed an advertising system that delivered high quality, high resolution images while also satisfying the strict requirements of the Union of European Football Associations’ LED advertising policy.

To meet these specific needs, Chelsea Football Club asked Visual Technology Limited and YCD Multimedia to establish this new system built upon the Cnario Digital Signage Suite software platform.

Despite the complex and rigorous requirements for this project, VTL and YCD produced a system that had multi-level redundancy, playback and content controls while also meeting the necessary standards required by the UK Premier League.

YCD Scores Major Points With Cnario

Famous Chelsea Football Club wows attendees and advertisers with new digital signage solution

As one of the most famous football clubs in the world, Chelsea Football Club is a highly prestigious and well-known sports venue in the United Kingdom frequented by thousands of soccer fans throughout the soccer season. The high-profile reputation, large attendance and widespread media coverage of this venue’s events makes it a very popular location for advertisers looking to get their products to a large variety of attendees.

This meant that offering a digital signage system capable of providing high quality high resolution images was an absolute necessity. Chelsea Football Club also wanted to be able to operate this advertising system with a degree of control that would allow them to execute playlists in real-time. In addition to all of this, Chelsea Football Club’s affiliation with the Union of European Football Associations meant that all the digital signage needed to uphold the UK Premier League’s LED advertising policy as well. This policy had a number of complex requirements that needed to be fulfilled including multi-level redundancy, and very specific height requirements necessary to host Premier League games.

With these very specific requirements and necessities in mind Chelsea Football Club approached YCD Multimedia and Visual Technology Limited (VTL) to construct a digital signage solution that would give the necessary image quality, and meet the other stringent requirements for this solution.

VTL designed and built a unique screen design that conformed to the UK Premier League’s guidelines and also allowed Chelsea Football Club to use the screen in an 80cm or 90cm high format. The high quality display was capable of delivering fully-synchronized playback across a 25040 pixel wide screen. VTL also handled the physical installing of the entire system which included laying all the cable and fitting all the mechanical aspects properly.

After this was complete YCD Multimedia integrated the Cnario software platform comprised of 2 x 4 channel players as the system’s main and secondary redundant source. In keeping with the UK Premier League’s requirements it also had a third line of defense with static media players located in pitch side control racks and a fourth line of defense, with an “in-module” media player. This meant that even if all communication from the main control room is lost, the system is still able to display advertising content.

The content is delivered to Chelsea Football Club from many different sources and comes in a number of different formats. VTL and YCD Multimedia’s system is able to accept content in all major formats and can easily play content of different sizes all within the same playlist. The system also was capable of handling three 15-minute playlists per half without looping. As a result, content could be single width (1565px), double width (3130px), and sequentially (allowing 16 or 8 equally sized portions across the screen). All zones across the screen were made individually addressable, putting Chelsea Football Club even more in control of their content.

The final result was a highly complex and capable digital signage solution that allowed Chelsea Football Club to do all that they had required and more. Not only could it loop both animated and static content in any size or location on the screen, it could also provide the multi-level redundancy, last minute content updates, instant playback control and playback reporting all with minimal day-to-day operation. This would ensure that there would never be any interruption of content playback and that playback could be stopped at any time during penalties, goals or corners. On top of all the operational benefits that came with this fully synchronized system, it also looked excellent on camera which allowed for increased advertising revenue for the club’s stadium while keeping true to the very strictly enforced UK Premier League guidelines.